Our Dying Democracy

for Americans. What's troubling to me at this time, as we are just a hand hand full of weeks, like two weeks until the midterm elections, is that Democrats once again are not doing the type of loud, microphone, megaphone, fucking burn the house down messaging that needs to happen in order to really signal and identify to the American people what it is that Republicans want to do in

this country. And so today I kind of want to stick with a couple of points that are happening right now that are happening underneath the radar, folks are not paying attention to. I'm doing multiple videos screaming from the rooftops every week. So here we go. First off, I want to bring your attention to what the Texas Public School Board is doing. So last week they announced that they were going to be mailing home in Texas DNA kits two parents and caregivers so that they could identify

their children in the event of an emergency. Now I want to pause for one second and say, what in the entire fuck this is so problematic on a number

of levels, But let's just start with level one. Level one being that instead of creating gun safety measures in the state of Texas, which Greg Abbott, the governor, has decided, oh to hell with, you know, will erase the age requirement, will allow anyone to get a gun with absolutely no waiting period whatsoever, because you know, the more guns the better. Doesn't matter that you had nineteen children gun down in their classroom. It doesn't matter that store shoppers who are

a gun down in El Paso. It doesn't matter any any of the fucking violence and mass shootings that have happened in Texas to get this governor to think to himself, maybe just maybe we don't take people's guns away, but maybe we make it a little bit more difficult for these motherfuckers to get a gun than it is to get a slurpee from seven to eleven. I digress. The reality here, though, for parents basically is what the State of Texas is signaling is just like, we're not going

to do anything. Right, you are basically ending your children to school on a hope and a prayer that they will return alive at the end of the school day. Right, you're gonna fucking roll the dice, and on top of doing so, because we know the ways in which aar fifteens rip through bodies and essentially render them unrecognizable. We're just gonna give you this little kid that you can swab in your kids and send it off to some fucking lab in Texas and then you'll be able to

identify them later. What that's level one. Let me bring you to level two. Level two is who the fuck is going to be in control of that DNA, because I sure as hell don't want anyone in Texas being in control of my DNA right because they have a funny way of you know, using it to arrest people, to drop DNA at crime scenes, to I don't know, search and find people that are documented and then ship them off. I have no idea, but you think the worst of it, and that's probably what is happening in Texas.

In no way, shape or form does it make sense for this state to be asking parents and caregivers for DNA samples. No way, No way does that assuage the fear and anxiety that parents already have in sending their kids to school knowing that they may not come home. No way does it feel safe or good to have the state of Texas that has, you know, this desire to lock up as many black and brown people as possible, having your DNA that they can again put anywhere, do

anything with. So if you are living in Texas, my advice to you do not give them your DNA, your child's DNA, don't give them your fucking cat or dog's DNA, because this is the beginning of some bizarre, fucking nineteen eighty four black mirror future that we don't want. Okay, So that's the first story that is like, oh my god, hey, I'm David. Plots of Slates Political Gabfest. As another election season accelerates, it can be tricky to sort through all

the noise and the news. Each week on the Gapfest, John Dickerson, Emily Bathalona and I decipher the headlines, break down the races, and tell you what issues really matter. We do not always agree, We definitely do not always agree, but we always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time. So subscribe to Slate's Political Gapfest, new episodes every Thursday. The second one is this one, folks, let me bring your attention back to it is that

House Republicans are doing. And again we talked about this last week Friday, which is that media once again is portraying the midterm elections as some type of horse race, some type of sporting event, as opposed to the existential crisis that it is for our democracy. You know, I can recall sitting in my middle school auditorium, all gathered in to watch Schindler's List, and I remember watching this film with my classmates and thinking to myself, how could

this possibly happen? It's just the question that kept going through my head. How do you allow your neighbors, store clerks, friends to be carted off and murdered by the state. How do you honestly just go about your day and think that this isn't absolutely crazy and outrageous. There was a scene in Schindler's List that I remember so vividly

because I only watched that film once. This was not something that much like Roots, much like other really gut wrenching stories about world history, violence, pain that like I can only stomach so much as a deep EmPATH. But there was a scene that I remember which was people walking around the streets of Germany and there was flakes coming down from the sky, and initially people thought that

it was snow. It wasn't. It was the ashes coming from the crematoriums and the gas chambers that the Germans were using to murder six million Jews. It was this scene where you saw people kind of going about their day to day and then you see all of these flakes that are coming down, but you see they weren't melting when they were hitting the ground because it was ashes,

human ashes that were coming down from the sky. So as I'm watching the scene as a young person again, the question in my head that no teacher could ever answer was how did this country allow this to happen? Well, how do you allow things to happen? Well, you don't make a big deal of it. It isn't a headline, right, It's just casual headlines about Germany and about Hitler taking

over this country and the troops moving in here. But it isn't constant headlines about the threat, the violence, the terror, the killings, the rapes, the murders of babies that are happening each and every day. No, those weren't in the headlines. As a matter of fact, as Hitler was extinguishing the fucking Jewish population and the population of also academics and other undesirables, the New York Times was doing a fucking home and garden tour with Hitler. He likes long walks,

he likes plants. That's how they were talking about him in American press and media as he was over in Germany setting up concentration camps. So how does this happen, Well, the media has to be complicit, That's how it happens. While Germany decided after World War Two to have to conduct the Nuremberg Trials and to embed in their history this obscene point in time where heinous crimes against humanity were committed, that they embedded this in the history of

the nation so as never to repeat it. There are monuments all over Germany to the Holocaust as a consistent reminder. Well, as we watch our democracy die, as we wake up every day to headlines that do not convey the gravity of the situation that the United States, and by virtue, the world, is in because I continue to say, and

I tweet and I record this. Has anybody thought about what happens when Republicans not only take over Congress, but take over the presidency, and that the United States is no longer a democracy but realigned in this new formulated access of evil with Russia, with Hungary, with the fucking Mussolini light over in Italy. Has anybody thought about what would have happened in World War Two had the United States been forced into war in order to stop Hitler.

What would have happened. It wouldn't have been six million, Maybe it would have been twelve. Maybe they would have never stopped. Maybe there would be no Jewish person right living today, which is what Hitler wanted, if there had been no United States to gather up our fun and

allies and take that motherfucker out. Has anybody thought about what it looks like when America is no longer in the game of democracy and human decency and human rights, when we're actually the ones that are setting the pace for just how many rights that you can take away, just how you can utilize your military in a way to beat back dissension, and that they are taking the pages from the books of China and Iran and other places to oppress people and depress people in a way

that we no longer cease to be a nation of liberty and freedom. And look, you think I don't know that America is imperfect beyond imperfect. I'm a black, queer woman in America. I know all too well. But the reality is is that we are the closest in the world to that idea of democracy that we try and perfect with each and every generation. So how is it that at this point in time, seventy percent of Americans

believe that our democracy is at stake? We've been identified in twenty twenty one for the first time in the history of the United States since backsliding democracies have been identified, that we are now a backsliding democracy. But then sixty percent of the countries looking around and saying, ah, but gas prices are too high and the cost of food is too high. So I'm gonna go with Republicans that do what exactly, not a fucking thing to help you,

and never have. But instead of once again identifying the villain for what the villain is trying to do, you have democrats stumbling fumbling the fucking ball that was given to them literally by Republicans when they decided to overturn fifty year fucking precedent with Roe v. Wade. Now, all of a sudden, white women are like, well, I guess taken away my rights to an abortion and bodily autonomy is not so bad because my gas prices are so high.

I think that that's more important, And that's the way that I'm going to fucking vote. You know what I need right now? I need white Americans to vote in a way that isn't so goddamn self centered and think that they are going to be protected by virtue of

their whiteness. I guess so if you do what millions of Germans did, which was just you know, close your mouth, close your eyes, and align yourself with Hitler in order to protect your own ass, I guess that that will be the way until all of a sudden, you're some high identified by a neighbor, by a friend, by a family member that says no, no, no, right. I saw them sending a letter to this person, I saw them

giving money to this person. They're the enemy of the state, and then they come and lock your ass up as well or worse, what Republicans are coming after right now is low hanging fruit fruit that they think that nobody gives a fuck about. That's how they start until they get to the place where they're coming for you, Martin Namoller, Folks,

the poem first they came for. So here's the thing that Republicans are doing right now that again is not getting the national attention that it needs because the fucking media just follows the bouncing ball that Republicans throw out. Oh, Democrats don't want Biden on the trail, Let's do eighty five stories about that, as opposed to all of the fucking anti LGBT, ant high women, anti black, fucking bills that Republicans are putting out. Let's talk about whether or

not Democrats like Biden. Are you fucking dumb? So here we are. House Republicans have introduced legislation and this I am reading from MPR that some critics are describing as a quote national don't say gay bill, And this is what they are seeking to do. The measure was introduced by Representative Mike Johnson from Louisiana, has thirty two Republican co sponsors, and this is what this piece of shit says.

Quote the Democratic Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology. The bill, called the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, aims to prohibit the use of federal funds to develop, implement, facilitate, or fund any sexual orientated program, event, or literature for children under the age of ten, and for other purposes. But listen to this.

The language in the proposed legislation lumps together topics of sexual orientation and gender identity with sexual content such as

pornography and stripping. Because you see what Republicans have always thought of the LGBTQ community and why their fucking savior Reagan decided to, let you know, tens of thousands of gay people die in the nineteen eighties from the HIV AID crisis, is that they've always thought that we are somehow marked by the devil, that we are just in one big sexual cabal trying to take up children, steal

them from their parents, and turn them gay. Funny enough, the same motherfuckers are the ones that didn't do dick when it came to the Catholic Church and them actually sexualizing tens of thousands of children over the course of years. They don't pay fucking taxes, right, religiously exempt, and have all the good will in order to be able to

perversely brutalize and abuse your fucking children. Tell me when there has been a case right where there has been oh, a drag queen reading a story to your children that has somehow turned into abuse. No, it has been at the hands of these organizations that are lifted up by conservatives that somehow, somehow end up in sexual abuse scandals.

Looking at you, boy Scouts, and you see the foolishness, the fuckery that is inside of the Republican brain would have you believe that if you are sexualizing children of the same sex and somehow you are gay, No, you are not. You are a fucking predator. Right, much in the same way that they don't know how a woman's body works or how pregnancy works, they actually don't know how fucking predators work, which they should because their entire

fucking party is filled with them. The bill complains that some school districts have implemented sex ed programming for kids under ten, and that many newly implemented sexual education curriculums encourage discussion of sexuality, sexual orientation, transgenderism, and gender ideology

as early as kindergarten. Let me tell you something. Books, literature that talks about different types of families, that talk about different types of feelings, that allow children at an age appropriate reading to understand themselves and the world around them, is not sexualized. Do you know what is sexualized? Fucking baby onesies in stores that say lady killer right, the oppressed of nature that heteronormativity places in our shopping aisles,

in our school system. What we are looking to do, those that believe in equity and justice, is to create a society where all people are accepted as they are, not as you perceive them to be or as you tell them that they should be. It is about dignity and fucking respect. Gagging children, however, and telling them that they can't talk about who their families are or who they are as they identify, and criminalizing them because of

it is what actual abuse fucking looks like. When we see the numbers of LGBTQ suicides going through the roof, which they have always been higher than the national average, that is what fucking child abuse looks like. Denying children gender affirming care, healthcare and recognition of who they are. That is what abuse looks like. Throwing parents in jail for wanting to affirm and love their children for who they are and not who you want them to be.

That is what child abuse looks like. We're enrolling your child in a church program that would beat the gay out of them and tell them that they are worthless if they don't embrace heteronormativity is what the fuck abuse looks like. Allowing administrators and teachers to discriminate and demean children who are asking for dignity and respecting the classroom by virtue of identifying them by the pronouns that they

use is what abuse looks like. So you tell me why the fuck Democrats just can't say that, here's what abuse looks like and list out all of the ways that the Republican Party is not only harming LGBTQ children, but you know, instead of giving them I don't know, gun safety policy, we're giving you DNA kids. You want to talk about the party of child abuse, look no further than the Republican Party and all of the sex

traffickers and offenders that they wrap their arms around. Fundamentally, we are trying to create a society that respects and shows dignity for all people, not just the people you fucking like. So the fact that we cannot articulate that truth to the American public very clearly. And let me tell you something, I am not in the business of not all Republicans. If you are identify with today's Republican Party, if you proudly rock that ard, then you are a

fucking racist. You are a homophobe, You are a transphobe, you are an islamophobe. You are not a patriot. You are a white nationalist, period point fucking black. Because I don't see Marjory tailor Green or these other motherfuckers part and parceling and saying not all Democrats know when they get up on a microphone they say that Democrats are trying to kill us. Funny because they're the only ones that are putting crosshairs over the faces of their Democratic opponents.

I don't see any language or hear any language that Democrats use that look to paint their Republican opponents as their enemy at war. I see only one fucking party doing that. So let's just tell the truth. I say this all the goddamn time. It's not that hard. Do not waste your time contorting yourself into a place to say not all Republicans and there are some good Republicans, No,

there are not. They are all part of the same fucking poisoned orchard that when they have their way, this country will look worse than it did in nineteen fifty. They are trying to create a climate of desperation that will turn neighbor against neighbor in order to be able to pick up the little crumbs that the one percent will leave behind. This is not the fucking country that we want, and it's only heading in one direction, and

it's because of the Republican Party. So if you are not identifying them as the villains, as the enemies of democracy, the enemies of progress, the enemies of family, of freedom, and of love, then what are you doing. You're wasting my fucking time and the very little time that we have left to save our democracy. Hey there, I want to tell you about another podcast I think you'll love. The Brown Girl's Guide to Politics, hosted by a Shanty Gohler,

the president of Emerge. BGG is the one stop shop for women of color who want to hear and talk about the world of Politics Join a Shanty this season as she talks to incredible women of color who are changing the face of politics and tackling some of the most important issues facing the United States, from reproductive justice to voting rights, to climate change and more. Tune in every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Folks, we are not in a good place. We haven't been in a

good place probably since Obama left office. Right, let's all just be clear. But the problem of the Obama presidency is this. We didn't create the pipeline, the megaphone. We didn't start to institutionalize the ideas of progress and justice for all. We didn't tell people to go run at the school board level, to go run at the city council level. Right. We made Democrats made folks believe that, oh,

everything happens at the national level. No, if we had it in our mind to have the national type of takeover that Republicans are instituting now and have been doing blanketing the country oh the last couple of decades. If we use the power and the megaphone that Obama had while we were in office to get good people to run for office at the state and local level, to introduce curriculum and policies right that couldn't be stripped away.

We wouldn't be here right now. But we were too busy patting ourselves on the back in the early two thousand saying, oh, we're post racial, Oh we did it. We didn't, And now we're in the fight for our fucking lives. So my call to action to all of you. I know that you are registered to vote. I know many of you have probably already early voted in your states.

What I need you to do with the time, the treasure, and the treasure and the talent that you have is get as many young people to vote in this midterm election. Get your kids to call their friends, get them to do tiktoks about it, get them to connect. I need as many older people right to tell them that Republicans take over power. And guess what, you're losing Social Security and Medicaid because those are the two big entitlements that

they are coming for. They're telling you that you're too expensive, that the years in decades that you poured into our economy you're never going to get back. They're gonna pocket it. Instead, wake people up. Do what you can with what it is that you have. If we all did that, then we stand a fighting chance. And right now that's what we need. Fighters, warriors for justice, reminding ourselves that we, dear friends, are the real patriots. We are the ones

that are defending democracy, that are defending this country. But we can't do it with lip service alone. We need to put action behind our words. That is it for me today, dear friends, on woke f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.